The present invention relates to the field of drug application during a CT scan. In particular, the present invention relates to a method of controlling a local application of drugs to a part of the body of a patient during a CT scan, a CT scanner system adapted for controlling a local application of drugs, to a computer program for controlling the local application of drugs and to a use of containers for controlling a local application of a drug to a part of the body of a patient during a CT scan.
Local application of drugs to a part of the body of a patient is well known in the field of medical practice. For example, in the case of dental surgery, the dentist may apply an anesthetic locally to that part of the mouth of the patient where the surgery is to be carried out. The local application is thereby performed by injecting the anesthetic manually into the tissue of the patient.
In the field of cardiac CT imaging, the temporal resolution of the cardiac CT images depends sensitively on the ratio between heart beat rate and the gantry rotation frequency. During a typical cardiac CT scan, the heart beat rate may drop at the beginning as a reaction of the heart to the inflow of contrast agent. In the second half of the scan however, the heart beat rate may increase again as a result of the reduced oxygen content in the blood since the patient holds his breath. The heart beat rate may also be influenced by factors like stress, fear, emotion caused by the noise of the apparatus and so on. The varying heart beat rate leads to a spatially varying temporal resolution and prohibits the use of a patient-specific gantry rotation time in order to optimize the temporal resolution. Therefore, in order to avoid motion artifacts or a spatially varying temporal resolution, the heart beat rate has to be kept constant during the cardiac CT scan.